Call for Obama to open UFO files

Dean Merchant

Sunday

Jan 18, 2009 at 2:00 AM

Last November, Paradigm Research Group of Bethesda, Md., launched "The Million Fax on Washington" campaign, urging Americans to fax, e-mail or send letters to the Washington Transition Headquarters of President-elect Barack Obama...

Last November, Paradigm Research Group of Bethesda, Md., launched "The Million Fax on Washington" campaign, urging Americans to fax, e-mail or send letters to the Washington Transition Headquarters of President-elect Barack Obama, calling on him to end the Truth Embargo regarding extraterrestrial/UFO presence and to release any information to the American people that would not jeopardize national security.

According to the research group, 126 million Americans age 18 and older believe UFOs are real and 180 million believe the government is hiding the truth.

Dr. Ted Loder, University of New Hampshire professor emeritus, became interested in extraterrestrials in 1997 when then governor Jeanne Shaheen sent him at his own request, to a closed congressional briefing in Washington, D.C., on UFOs.

As then Gov. Shaheen's representative, Dr. Loder listened to top-secret military witnesses as they described their observations and sightings to members of Congress and the U.S. Senate. Based on what he heard, Loder came to believe in the alleged government cover-up of extra-terrestrial technologies, technologies he feels the world desperately needs for safe, inexpensive and sustainable energy to solve global poverty.

Loder is associated with the Disclosure Project, whose goal is for "free and open" congressional hearings concerning UFOs and for the release of allegedly suppressed technology, and with The Orion Project, whose objective is to develop sustainable energy technology to serve global humanitarian purposes.

Loder cites the B-2 stealth bomber as a possible beneficiary of ET reverse engineering because there is evidence, he says, that the craft is "anti-gravity assisted," using anti-gravity propulsion some believe was derived from recovered UFOs coupled with human scientific research.

The B-2 is flown by the elite 509th Bomb Wing, several aviation generations evolved from their 1947 Roswell fame. (The 509th Composite Group was formed in World War II to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.)

The 509th was stationed at Roswell, N.M., and their intelligence officers were first on the crash site at Corona, 75 miles from Roswell. They have been historically linked to the controversial event ever since. Over the years cries of cover-up have failed to die out, some believing an extraterrestrial craft was downed and ETs recovered from the wreckage.

By 1965 the 509th Bomb Wing had moved to Pease AFB in Portsmouth as part of the Strategic Air Command during the Cold War, with a powerful nuclear weapon delivery capability. On Aug. 26 of that year the 509th participated in a SAC bombing competition. Eight days later, on Sept. 3, the lights went out at Pease two hours before the "Incident at Exeter."

"The 509th BW is special," says nuclear physicist Stanley Friedman, speaking from his home in New Brunswick, Canada. "They were elite and hand-picked."

Friedman was the first civilian to investigate the Roswell site, in 1978, more than 30 years after the alleged crash. He has met with and interviewed most of the primary players of the event. As to a possible connection between the 509th, Roswell, N.M., and Exeter, N.H. Friedman says, "There are no coincidences."

Over the decades, Pease has denied that anything out of the ordinary occurred at the airbase on that Sept. 3. But former Hampton Police Chief Robert Mark, a sergeant with the 509th Security Police Squadron at Pease in 1965, told a different story.

As related in the New Hampshire Seacoast Sunday in 1990, "... Mark was on duty at the main gate when, at about midnight, he and other officers saw a huge, brightly lit object approaching the base at an altitude of 300 to 400 feet. As the object passed , silently, over the base, Mark recalls, lights began going out.

"Seconds later, Mark raced to the base radar tower, where he listened in as two jet fighters took off to give chase, but were quickly outdistanced by the fast-moving object."

In his book "The Day After Roswell," retired Col. Philip J. Corso claims he inherited the Roswell file at the Pentagon and farmed out ET technologies for development. But such is poppycock and folderol to retired Col. George Rubin of Stratham. The former N.H. state representative and crusty combat-seasoned battalion commander spent time at the Pentagon. Rubin says he is sure that if there was ET activity, he would have been informed and adds that media-driven UFO stories have taken on a life of their own.

Stanton Friedman, though, purports that there was an immediate cover-up of the Roswell crash by President Truman and a select group around him known as the "Majestic 12."

Some of those involved in Ufology and the field of alien abduction are against full government disclosure of alleged UFO and ET documents.

Kathleen Marden of Stratham, co-author with Stanley Friedman of "Captured: The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience," recalls being in an auditorium when all present were asked to raise their hands if they did not believe in UFO disclosure. She says her own and Stanley Friedman's hands were conspicuously held up. Marden, in her role as a social worker, is for partial disclosure. Her training leaves her concerned about "social unrest, depending on what's released."

Friedman fears that national security secrets could be compromised by those who mean to do harm in this age of terrorism.

Others, like State Rep. Susan Kepner, D-Hampton, who was a supporter of New Mexico governor Bill Richardson's presidential bid, is for disclosure only after measured review in Washington, because she feels people "can be reactionary to information and act before they think it all out. She cited as an example the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and how the allegation "got people to go charging in after them."

Because of Jimmy Carter's own sighting of a UFO in 1969, he told reporters during his 1976 presidential campaign, that as president he would make any and all UFO information available to the public and scientists. Despite such a forthright promise, once elected he did not follow through with his pledge, citing "defense implications."

Those demanding UFO disclosure may have finally found their man in Obama's transition chief, John Podesta. Podesta, Clinton's chief of staff from 1998 to 2001, is an advocate for government openness. At a national press club conference in 2002 he said the government should "open the books" on its UFO investigations.

"I think it's time to open the books on questions that have remained in the dark on the question of government investigations of UFOs ... It's time to find out what the truth really is that's out there ... because the American people, quite frankly, can handle the truth and we ought to do it because it's the law," Podesta said.

But in response to a question by the late Tim Russert of NBC News, Barack Obama said, he was more concerned about "improving the quality of people's lives here on earth, than space aliens." Obama's short list is already full.

In a forward to "The Roswell Dig Diaries" Gov. Richardson wrote "It would help everyone if the U.S. government disclosed everything it knows. With full disclosure and our best scientific investigation, we should be able to find out what happened on that fateful day in July of 1947. The American people can handle the truth no matter how bizarre or mundane, and contrary to what you see in the movies." As a congressman, Richardson was denied access to the Roswell files by the Department of Defense.

Richardson called on the federal government to "come clean on Roswell."

For former Hampton police chief Robert Mark and those who sighted the UFO that warm September night in 1965 as it traveled from Portsmouth to Plaistow, the possibility of UFO disclosure under the Obama administration remains to be seen. For the time being they are left with Robert Mark's words that the military intentionally withholds information to avoid panic, "But if you see something like what I saw, you never forget it."

Should the question of disclosure come before Congress, Professor Loder reminds readers that New Hampshire's junior senator Jeanne Shaheen was fully briefed by him on ETs and UFOs on his return from Washington, D.C.

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